In Need Of An MMA Workout

Bigger Stronger Leaner Powerlifting & Strength Sports
1

Not just weights, but GPP. Speed, Strength, Stamina, and making them all work together. Flexibility too but thats just yoga.

Right now I use something thats sort of along the lines of concentrated loading. It’s upper/lower 2x a week. 3 sets, 5 reps each (i can microload down to 1lb)
Basically, it goes:
Chest
Chest (light)
Triceps
Frontdelts
Medialdelts
Lats(row)
Lats(vertical)
Upperback
Elbow flexion
Pronators
Subscapularis(medial shoulder rotation)
Abs
Obliques

Squats or Deadlift
Unilateral leg move
Posterior Chain
Hamstrings
Calves
Tibilas anterior
Wrist flexors
Wrist extensors
Neck Flexors
Neck Extensors
Hip Flexors
Traps
Leg Abductors

I believe in hitting each and every muscle but is this over doing it?

When I progress, I was gonna add max effort and dynamic effort moves. Also, I was considering HIIT, and weighted HIIT.

2

Hmm. That seems like it might be too much. Not because of the parameters, but the number of exercises. Keep it simple, and stick to the “butter” exercises.

Deadlift
Trap Bar Deadlift
Squat
Front Squat (great one)
Snatches
RDL’s

Make sure to get a ton of chinups and pulling in general in. MMA causes you to throw thousands of punches which can cause shoulder imbalances. Also, pulling is more important for grappling anyway.

I assume you are getting some conditioning in your classes? Try a conditioning circuit of something like this:

As many rounds as you can complete in 20 mins:

10 Single leg squats
8 Hip Extensions
6 Sprawls
4 Pull-Ups.

You can work up to 2 of those circuits with a 5 minute break.

3

How are all you guys serious enough about MMA to train for it but not enough to buy a ~$40 book like the one in the store?

4

Are you being serious, or just trolling? 13 exercises in a workout? What does that take, 3 hours? Read around man, you’re thinking more like Arnold and less like someone who wants to train MMA.

5

That is a lot of excercises, yes. The origin came from Defrancos WS4SB.

http://www.defrancostraining.com/articles/articles.htm

I just made the days symmetrical, i added side delts and triceps on monday, chest 2 to friday. Then I added front delts, pronators, subscapularis. Thats it. Considering he had 8 (after breaking up the supersets) on fri, and 7 on monday, thats what i added. It was cause I wanted to train every muscle, and yes I am willing to spend 2.5 hours in the gym.

Xcept after reading the first post, I’m gonna reorder it like this

Barbell Chest variant
Dumbell Chest variant
Shoulder Press variant (or snatches)
Lats (vertical on mon, row on thurs)
Upper back variant
Bicep Variant
Medial rotation (leaving that in cause its the only way to hit subscapularis)
Ab variant
Oblique

Squat or Deadlift
Unilateral Leg
Posterior chain and hams
Grip
Traps
Neck Flexion
Neck Extension
Hip Flexion

btw the 3x5 is ramped at 50, 75, 100. The new way lasts about an hour

Or is this still too much, i didnt’ think so because if I drop any more off of upper body I’d be dropping the big moves shown in this example

Chest: Bench
Shoulders: Military
Lats: Row
Upperback: Powerclean
Biceps: Curl
Abs, obliques and joint work are extra

Squat/Deadlifts
Unilateral (cause legs gotta work on their own)
Pos Chain (Westside supplement to Max effort)
Grip (important for grappling)
Traps (I dunno, should I drop these?)
Neck flexors and extensors (so i dont break my neck)
Hip Flexors (knee strikes)

K so how is that?
MonTues,ThurFri
Where should I put HIIT btw, and HIIT weighted?

6

[quote]J-- wrote:
That is a lot of excercises, yes. The origin came from Defrancos WS4SB.

http://www.defrancostraining.com/articles/articles.htm

I just made the days symmetrical, i added side delts and triceps on monday, chest 2 to friday. Then I added front delts, pronators, subscapularis. Thats it. Considering he had 8 (after breaking up the supersets) on fri, and 7 on monday, thats what i added. It was cause I wanted to train every muscle, and yes I am willing to spend 2.5 hours in the gym.

Xcept after reading the first post, I’m gonna reorder it like this

Barbell Chest variant
Dumbell Chest variant
Shoulder Press variant (or snatches)
Lats (vertical on mon, row on thurs)
Upper back variant
Bicep Variant
Medial rotation (leaving that in cause its the only way to hit subscapularis)
Ab variant
Oblique

Squat or Deadlift
Unilateral Leg
Posterior chain and hams
Grip
Traps
Neck Flexion
Neck Extension
Hip Flexion

btw the 3x5 is ramped at 50, 75, 100. The new way lasts about an hour

Or is this still too much, i didnt’ think so because if I drop any more off of upper body I’d be dropping the big moves shown in this example

Chest: Bench
Shoulders: Military
Lats: Row
Upperback: Powerclean
Biceps: Curl
Abs, obliques and joint work are extra

Squat/Deadlifts
Unilateral (cause legs gotta work on their own)
Pos Chain (Westside supplement to Max effort)
Grip (important for grappling)
Traps (I dunno, should I drop these?)
Neck flexors and extensors (so i dont break my neck)
Hip Flexors (knee strikes)

K so how is that?
MonTues,ThurFri
Where should I put HIIT btw, and HIIT weighted?[/quote]

Why not just follow DeFranco’s program? Many people on this site, including myself, have used it to great sucess. NFL players use it. You don’t really need to add anything.

7

I didn’t really add too much tbh, its pretty much the same thing now. Differences is are

  1. Broke up the supersets, cuase I dont like hogging the weights, and i gotta take time to microload. Maybe I should try anyway?

  2. Added medial delts to mon, since he didn’t put em there. I dunno why, but I can still get away with adding a lb or 2 twice a week

  3. Turned fridays tricep into another chest supplement

  4. Added medial rotation on both days, cause there is a rotator cuff called the subscapularis that can only be hit by medial rotation.

  5. Reps and sets. I picked 5 for reps, cause that is considered to best number for strenght by many includign starr, rippetoe, and pendlay. And they also say, as well as i’ve experienced, that nobody but a raw beginner can do their 5 rep max 3 times in a row. So I ramp it.

  6. Broke the grip/neck or trap superset

  7. He said traps or neck, why not both?

  8. Hip flexors he included too, i just put em on lower body

8

Why not do the MMA workouts by chad? Hammer Down.

9

You can also do EDT

10

[quote]SeanT wrote:
Why not do the MMA workouts by chad? Hammer Down.[/quote]

I think a good MMA article would work a treat at T-Nation. Chad’s was excellent but it wasn’t something you could base your weekly training around.

MMA is tough to train for. It’s pretty much the triathlon of Martial Arts. You have to train your stand up, your grappling and etc. Then you are supposed to throw some strength and conditioning into the mix.

The training articles I read of the pros, seem like the weights side of things is more an afterthought. I’m not saying it is right or wrong, but I’d be very interested to see how the MMA competitors on this board cope with this juggling act.

11

[quote]Konstantine wrote:
You can also do EDT[/quote]

I think EDT would work better than most for MMA.

12

[quote]Man O’ War wrote:
Konstantine wrote:
You can also do EDT

I think EDT would work better than most for MMA.[/quote]

I second this.

Also, you might want to try doing… MMA?

The whole thing is sport specific. If you are really getting enough MMA training in then you shouldn’t have a ton of time to lift. After that maybe take a day for oly lifts and a day for dealifts and sprints. I find that more wrestling and more sparring helps MMA more than any strength routine.

You can live by one nice rule:

“Both your submissions and your striking need work.”

-chris

13

[quote]realpeanutbutter wrote:
Also, you might want to try doing… MMA?

The whole thing is sport specific. If you are really getting enough MMA training in then you shouldn’t have a ton of time to lift. After that maybe take a day for oly lifts and a day for dealifts and sprints. I find that more wrestling and more sparring helps MMA more than any strength routine.

You can live by one nice rule:

“Both your submissions and your striking need work.”

-chris[/quote]

Fair point. Unless you train full time, there is not much time to devote to anything other than the actual MMA.

Also, one tends to be pretty banged up the majority of the time which makes heavy lifting a big ask.

14

[quote]Man O’ War wrote:
realpeanutbutter wrote:
Also, you might want to try doing… MMA?

The whole thing is sport specific. If you are really getting enough MMA training in then you shouldn’t have a ton of time to lift. After that maybe take a day for oly lifts and a day for dealifts and sprints. I find that more wrestling and more sparring helps MMA more than any strength routine.

You can live by one nice rule:

“Both your submissions and your striking need work.”

-chris

Fair point. Unless you train full time, there is not much time to devote to anything other than the actual MMA.

Also, one tends to be pretty banged up the majority of the time which makes heavy lifting a big ask.[/quote]

and even then more than one day of heavy lifting is semi-unnecessary. Strongman circuit training and oly lifts are where I find the best mat functional results lie. You only need to DL heavy to keep bones strong. the rest is usually about getting your HR up and learning to deal with pukie feelings.

Even then that ype of training is best done with sport specific stuff like sparring and thai pads.

-chris

15

[quote]realpeanutbutter wrote:
and even then more than one day of heavy lifting is semi-unnecessary. Strongman circuit training and oly lifts are where I find the best mat functional results lie. You only need to DL heavy to keep bones strong. the rest is usually about getting your HR up and learning to deal with pukie feelings.

Even then that ype of training is best done with sport specific stuff like sparring and thai pads.

-chris[/quote]

So what would a typical training week look like for yourself?

16

J-

Have you ever done any of the crossfit style workouts? I would play around with a lot of complexes, like power cleans to presses, etc.
The goal for a MMA fighter should be to spend as much time working fighting techniques and using some serious short bouts of lifting to develop/maintain power, strength and muscular endurance.

This guy has some books out that are good for MMA style programs:

17

[quote]XXman wrote:
This guy has some books out that are good for MMA style programs:
www.rosstraining.com/[/quote]

Is Rosstraining actually as good as it is made out to be? On Sherdog, they can’t stop raving on about it.

18

[quote]Man O’ War wrote:
XXman wrote:
This guy has some books out that are good for MMA style programs:

Is Rosstraining actually as good as it is made out to be? On Sherdog, they can’t stop raving on about it.

[/quote]

Just got his infinite intensity book the other day with my main sport of BJJ/catch wrestling and will be following his ideas from next week onwards so i’ll let you know in a few weeks how good it is

19

lol i wasn’t even gonna answer this but yes rossboxing.com is the correct answer.

20

Hmm, I didn’t realize that most of this stuff came from classes, not the weights.

I haven’t actually started the classes yet though, I have to take care of some debts first. But I am dead serious bout MMA, and though I haven’t started MMA, I have 14 years of Taekwondo (kicking art) 4 years of Hapkido (countering, no good in MMA cause most of the techniques leave the opponent dead or incapacitated) and a year of boxing.

So i aint trolling, I’m dead serious but I was looking to train MMA style until I can take the classes… I guess I have to speed that up. Is there like some sort of training league I should look for, like a well known school that has branches all over? (I live in western mass)

Thanks for all the advice thus far.